


the heart that you call home

by thatsparrow



Category: Original Work
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Plans For The Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26454088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: When Cato finally walks from the arena—weighed heavy by the wound in his thigh, sweat and dust dried into the creases of his skin, the blood of thebestiaestill warm and sticky on his hands—Gaius is waiting for him. He's worn to the bone from his labor, the lingering adrenaline leeching fast from his muscles, but gods be blessed, Gaius is waiting for him, and that alone is worth any pain he has just endured.
Relationships: Gladiator/Gladiator
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17
Collections: Classical Flash 2020





	the heart that you call home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [The_Plaid_Slytherin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Plaid_Slytherin/gifts).



> there are almost certainly historical inaccuracies in this. it happens
> 
> title from "the engine driver" by the decemberists

When Cato finally walks from the arena—weighed heavy by the wound in his thigh, sweat and dust dried into the creases of his skin, the blood of the _bestiae_ still warm and sticky on his hands—Gaius is waiting for him. He's worn to the bone from his labor, the lingering adrenaline leeching fast from his muscles, but gods be blessed, Gaius is waiting for him, patient, present, and when Cato's left leg finally gives way, Gaius is at his side, bracing Cato with his shoulder, ready to bear as much of the weight as Cato will allow. Gaius is waiting for him, and that alone is worth any pain he has just endured.

"I fought for this," Cato says, low, murmured into the juncture of Gaius's neck as blood loss turns him lightheaded. "For you."

"Distractions are dangerous," Gaius says, less stern than Cato would expect, more worried than he'd like. He supposes that's fitting, with Gaius now half-carrying him to the physician's quarters and the wound in his thigh flowing free enough to stain Gaius's own leg red from hip to knee. "Particularly in the arena. It's distraction that sees a lion nearly carving you open to the bone."

"If you are a distraction, then it is a lovely one indeed."

"This is why you need to keep your focus, Cato. Who else will spin such pretty words for me if you're gone?" His voice is light, but too deliberately so, like stage cosmetics caked on thick enough to be seen in the stands fifty feet up. Underneath is something else—clear enough for Cato to notice even in his dizzied state—something tensed in Gaius's jaw, something that's turned his hands and shoulders into a collection of stiff, hard angles.

"Gaius, what's troubling you?"

Gaius shakes his head, "Later."

"You'd deny an injured man?"

"When my primary concern is in having his wounds tended and placing him on a path towards being uninjured, yes, without question."

Strip away that gruffness, hiding under all the muscle and armor, and he's just a mother hen at heart. Still, Cato's world pitches suddenly, slanted and spinning like he's deep in the bottom of his cups, and so this once he concedes, lets Gaius guide them like some three-legged entity through the tunnels under the arena to the physician. Bites down and digs grooves into his palms as the physician cleans the cut with some stinging, sharp-smelling ointment, then sews it closed and bandages it with a strip of white linen. All the while, Gaius waits at his shoulder, paces the room, stands ready should Cato need him. He may as well have feathers and a brood of chicks at his heels.

"I'm alright," Cato says as the physician is wrapping his leg. True, he's weary enough to sleep for an age, but Gaius doesn't need to know that. "Tell him, won't you?"

"He'll live, certainly," the physician says, glancing up at Gaius. "I'll need to check it again in a day or so for any signs of infection, but, yes, I believe he will be alright."

Good news, by all accounts, and yet Gaius's frown only deepens. "Would you allow us a moment?" he says to the physician, who nods before excusing himself from the room.

Cato smiles, wry. "Perhaps I'm mistaken, but you don't seem terribly pleased by that news."

Gaius takes a seat opposite, lets out a slow breath. "I am, Cato, of course I am. But now that I am free from worrying for your health, I have nothing to distract myself from other concerns." The light is low in the physician's chamber, but even so, Cato sees another flicker of tension in Gaius's jaw. Still, Gaius reaches for his hand, laces their fingers together tightly enough for Cato to feel the promise of it. He swallows. "I feared for you, at the end."

"I had everything in hand—" 

"It looked reckless." Gaius's lips are pressed together. "You were handling the lions admirably, cautiously, but you let yourself be swayed by the crowd—you always do. You permit yourself to buy into the show of it all, as if you're watching from the stands with rest of them. As if, should what's happening below end poorly, all it will affect is the story you tell to your friends at the next banquet—as if it won't see you bleeding out in the dust to be carted off with the rest of the fallen beasts." Gaius lets out a slow, shaky breath. "I love you, Cato, but your pride is a dangerous thing, as likely to put you in the ground as whatever you may face above it."

Gaius's voice is colored dark with worry, brow creased in a way that's added new lines to the corners of his eyes. Cato understands the feeling well, has experienced it himself more than once while watching Gaius's own battles through the slitted windows in the arena walls, that feeling of his chest carved open when Gaius's strike misses, when his shield falters, when another fighter's _gladius_ opens an ugly slash of red across his skin. So he exhales, slow, his thumb tracing the grooves of Gaius's palm as he leans forward, presses his mouth to Gaius's in a kiss that tastes of sweat and dust, that sees Gaius wrapping a hand around Cato's neck to pull him closer, tight enough to bruise, heady enough that Cato feels himself going dizzy again. After a moment, Cato pulls back, breathing heavy.

"I may be susceptible to pride, Gaius, but there is no measure of it great enough to see me disregarding the dangers I face, nor to forget the stakes at hand—that the potential cost of every match is to be robbed of a future with you." Cato wets his lips, still feeling lightheaded, and equal odds it's the blood loss or the nearness of Gaius that's to blame. "I know my experience in the arena does not rival your own, but trust that any risks I take are not for my own satisfaction, but so that those patrons comfortable in their boxes might leave with better stories for their dinner parties, might revel in enough sensation of bloodlust to sate their appetites." His voice goes quiet. "I was losing them, Gaius."

"You can't be certain—" 

"I could feel it, could hear their attentions fading. Without a gamble, they would have grown bored, and how might that have affected my matches going forward? Who else might they then place in the ring against me to elevate the stakes?" The look he gives Gaius is steady, meaningful. "I know you worry—I understand your concerns well, gods know I've felt them often enough myself—but I will gladly endure any risk in playing their game if it brings me at all closer to earning freedom and a future for us both." He crooks a finger under Gaius's chin, the callused edge of his thumb sitting gentle on Gaius's jaw. "You trust me with your affections, so trust me in this, too. Trust that I would never be so foolish as to gamble my life on unfavorable odds when to do so might deprive me of the only person who has given my days meaning." Cato smiles. "That would be you, in case it wasn't clear." He leans in for another kiss—chaste, now, because gods know anything else would likely see the rest of the breath stolen from his lungs. "I won't begrudge you your worry, so long as it coexists with your trust."

Gaius exhales, then nods, and some of the lingering worry smooths from his brow. "Certainly if I can manage the rest of this, I can manage that, too." He lets out a half-laugh, his hand still steady on the back of Cato's neck. "My better judgment warned me that this would be difficult, to allow myself affection for another in the arena; I wondered whether it would be worth the worry, the gamble of heartache. Perhaps it makes me a fool, that I'm glad I chose not to listen."

"Then I must be a greater fool than you," Cato says with a smile as he leans in again. "For I never doubted it for a moment."

—

The evenings offer as much reliable opportunity for privacy as can be found in the arena—the sleeping quarters low and cramped, but shadowed enough for intimacy of most natures. Usually, it's an opportunity for respite, a rare occasion for Gaius and Cato to find some measure of comfort before the following morning—particularly when either has been laid low by injury—but this evening sees Cato turning in his sleep, back grown sticky with sweat and rest remaining stubbornly, surprisingly out of reach. When he does find it, it's fitful, interrupted by violent, blood-slicked dreams of the arena—ones that see him readying himself before the trapdoors open, sword braced, helm pulled low. But when the gates swing open, when Cato pulls back his arm against whatever waits with tooth and claw, it's Gaius stumbling out into the dust, unarmored and poorly equipped, looking at Cato with distrust and fear as the crowd jeers around him, calling for Cato to _kill the beast_. The image is relentless, waiting for him as soon as he closes his eyes, startling him awake the moment he does.

Near midnight, after having shifted from one side to the other for the dozenth time, Cato feels an arm settle over his abdomen, pulling him close. Quiet enough that the words belong to Cato alone, Gaius says, "If you were any more restless, you'd wake the whole damn barracks. Whatever troubles you, let me ease the weight of it."

Cato turns over so he and Gaius are facing one another; the light is too dim for him to see much but the curve of Gaius's cheek, the slant of his nose, but by now he knows Gaius's face well enough to supply the missing details—the deep brown of Gaius's skin, the fanned arc of his dark lashes, the stern set of his mouth made beautiful by levity, though little of their life in the arena calls for it. Here, though, he offers Cato a smile, warm and reassuring enough for Cato to feel comforted down to his bones. "You eased my concerns this afternoon, allow me to repay the favor."

"The usual worries, I suppose," Cato says. "Though tonight, they insist on not being ignored."

"Who is it this time, in the arena?" Gaius asks.

Cato's mouth goes dry. "My mother," he says after a moment, hoping Gaius doesn't hear the lie as strongly as he can taste it. 

In front of him, Gaius nods, begins skimming his knuckles over the line of Cato's arm. "Then let me give you new thoughts to replace them," he says, and Cato nods. "One day, the gods will smile upon us, and we will have enough coin to buy our freedom both. We will, for the last time, lay down our armor and our weaponry, and we will leave the arena and its blood-soaked sands behind us." Cato closes his eyes, lets Gaius's words wash over him like a warm bath, fixates on the gentle brush of Gaius's touch against his skin. "We will travel far enough into the countryside that gladiator matches are a foreign notion, and there we will take our remaining coin to buy a plot of land, build a house, establish a farm, make a living by our hands that sees no one dead as a result."

Cato hums, low and content in the back of his throat. "What else, Gaius?"

Gaius's smile grows wider, his mouth tilting towards the shell of Cato's ear. "We will grow grapes and olives in the hills, plant trees that bloom lush and green as velvet, buy goats and sheep and a flock of chickens to wake us in the morning. We will start our days early, fall asleep weary, but the work will be honest, rewarding, and free of any fear that we might one day watch the other fall in battle and be helpless to prevent it." He lowers his mouth to press a kiss to Cato's shoulder, then another to the curve of Cato's neck. "One day, we will be free, with no obligation but to each other, with no expectations but the dreams and ambitions we hold for our future. Our hands will turn callused from tools rather than weaponry, our scars faded to echoes, our nightmares left far enough behind that they may haunt our steps no longer. So sleep easy, my love. Sleep easy, share this dream with me, and one day, it will indeed be ours." 

Slowly, Cato's breathing eases. Slowly, his heartrate evens out to something more measured as he lingers in the world that Gaius has built, bringing himself fully enough into the fantasy that he can feel the weight of the rich, black soil between his fingers, can imagine them lying on the featherdown bed he'd gift to Gaius, soft as spring grass. It's not quite enough to bury his fears, to erase that too-real image of Gaius's eyes going glassy as the edge of Cato's blade bleeds him dry, but it does provide enough distraction to find some brief respite, solid enough to dig his fingers into, to hold fast until sleep nears once more. 

And in that blurry space between rest and wakefulness, Cato prays. Turns to the gods with this fragile hope suspended between him and Gaius that they might have the blessed fortune to be saved from seeing each other bleeding out on the arena sands, that might allow them to survive long enough to earn the coin to make manifest their futures. Cato prays, and as he does, fumbles his hand to the back of Gaius's neck once more, pulling him close in a kiss that becomes a different sort of prayer entirely.


End file.
